national surname chiming

Regarding the topic of Daming's tax reform in the next few years, it was discussed at the Jiangning meeting for several days.

Although there are still many details that have not been finalized, especially the setting of some specific amounts and thresholds, it still needs to take into account public sentiments.But these tasks do not affect the overall situation, and can be further refined by the professionals of the household department. Anyway, there are still two months before the final pilot.

But in the end Zhu Shuren will make a final decision with a strong posture, in case the spokesperson of the interests of the big landlord and big factory owner class helps to muddle through.

As for the main cabinet ministers who participated in the Jiangning meeting, after the tax system reform issue, there are still many important national issues to discuss.

Fortunately, Zhu Shuren understands the principle of eating food bite by bite. If you take a long step, it is easy to talk nonsense.

Therefore, none of the remaining issues are related to the construction of institutions and political reforms, and are all specific transactional issues.Such a combination of relaxation and relaxation can suppress resistance to a minimum.

Beginning in mid-May, the discussion agenda for the second and third phases of the Jiangning Conference has gradually come to the fore.

The topic of the second stage is about Daming's industrial policy and the direction of scientific and technological research and development support in the future seven-year plan.There are no conflicts and contradictions on this topic, and the atmosphere of discussion is relatively relaxed.

Because of Shi Kefa's old age, he doesn't understand these things and will not participate in the discussion.So mainly Zhu Shuren and Zhang Huangyan, together with Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Fang Yizhi who also joined the cabinet, discussed.Even Zhu Shuren's side concubine, Fang Ziling of the Daming Academy of Sciences, will also participate in some issues.

The topic of the third stage is about the next seven years, the construction plan for the previously newly occupied territory, plus some state-owned engineering projects, and the investment plan of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ming Dynasty——

Although the Qing Dynasty in history had a lot of bad governance, Zhu Shuren was still willing to learn from the good things that the Manchus did in accordance with the idea of ​​learning from the barbarians to control the barbarians.

In fact, the royal family expenditures of the Qing Dynasty were no smaller than that of the Ming Dynasty, and there were so many things such as the emperor's southern tour that wasted money and the people. The main reliance is the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Although the existence of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has various drawbacks such as exploitation and monopoly, it can be regarded as "competing with the people for profit", but these fat and scarce industries cannot benefit from the poor people.

Before Zhu Shuren came to power, the Shen family was the richest man in Ming Dynasty, with so much royal property (the royal family is not the royal family, but the property of Prince E's Mansion) and the Shen family's private property.Nowadays, a Ministry of Internal Affairs is needed to coordinate the operation.Coupled with the original Huangzhuang Huangshang and other small fish and shrimps in the Ming Dynasty, they are merged and operated together, which can roughly play the role of the state-owned assets management department of later generations.

With the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it is also convenient to invest in remote and newly occupied territories where ordinary private businessmen don't even bother to invest.After discovering this magical function, Zhu Shuren must of course learn from the Qing Dynasty's House of Internal Affairs, and make it bigger and stronger for his own use.

……

"The matter of the tax system reform has been tentatively decided, and today we will first discuss how the imperial court should guide the direction of my Ming's technological breakthroughs and the development of industrial technology in the next seven years.

The ultimate goal is to continue to enrich the country and strengthen the army, but at the same time, it must also serve the possible future use of troops against Burma and Vietnam.See what shortcomings need to be made up now. "

After the topic of the second stage was opened, Zhu Shuren took the lead in setting the tone for the meeting, allowing everyone to speak freely.

After everyone exchanged glances with each other, considering that this topic will ultimately serve the military, Zhang Huangyan, Minister of the Ministry of War, finally spoke first.

Zhang Huangyan doesn't have any vision and imagination for technology, so he mentioned two things according to the current military shortcomings:
"According to the losses in the border conflict reported by General Li before, the biggest problem with ordnance technology today is that the firearms are not waterproof and moisture-proof.

Although Wuchang-made has been improved for several generations and gradually strives for perfection, the problem of flintlock rifles not firing in hot and humid environments has never been completely cured.

Now my new generation of frontier soldiers in the Ming Dynasty all grew up in Wuchang, and there are fewer and fewer veterans who are good at using various weapons. We can only count on those who are at least forty years old and who originally returned from the south Only veterans with experience in previous battles in Liuhe and southern Sichuan and western Hunan can switch weapons proficiently in the battles with those southern barbarians to ensure that their combat effectiveness will not weaken.

However, more and more such soldiers died in battle, died of illness, died of old age, and gradually withered. If it took another three to five years to attack Burma, the number of people who could be counted on would be even fewer.In the final analysis, it is still necessary to strengthen the heat and humidity of the weapons, or to refine the soldiers and drill all kinds of equipment, not just bayonets and muskets. "

After hearing this feedback, Zhu Shuren subconsciously looked at Li Dingguo, who was only authorized to participate in the conference for the first time today, and asked a few questions.

I also got a positive answer from Li Dingguo, saying that the Daming Frontier Army in Yunnan did have difficulties in this regard, and now Li Dingguo is also relying on the old veterans of the Western Army in Zhao'an, including Sun Kewang who struggled as a guerrilla in the mountainous area of ​​Guizhou. The troops are now fully used.

But these people are also old. After all, it has been 19 years since the death of Chongzhen. These former peasant soldiers surrendered at least 19 years ago, and they have served in the army for more than 20 years.

After Zhu Shuren confirmed it, he couldn't help but feel a little headache. This problem is really difficult to solve.Because the reliability of firearms in hot and humid environments has always been a long-standing problem, it is basically impossible to completely solve them in the era of muskets.

Historically, the Western world’s colonial occupation of tropical inland rainforests was not fully developed until the second half of the 19th century, which is also related to this.

The muskets in the Americas could only help the colonists to tightly control the inland areas of Mexico, and further south to the inland tropical rain forests of Central America, the control of European colonists was much weaker (the coastal ports can still be controlled)
In Africa, the central rainforest of Black Africa also began to colonize after 1850, such as the famous Belgian Leopold enclosure of the Congo.The progress of the French in Southeast Asia and the Indochina Peninsula is similar.

Who made it until 1841, during the Opium War, that the flintlock still hadn't completely solved the problem of fighting in rainy days.When the British army was in Sanyuanli, it was because of heavy rain that a considerable part of the flintlock rifles could not be used.

Although Zhu Shuren knew the history and the evolution route of technology, he couldn't just come down to give instructions on R&D. He had already used up all the real stuff in his stomach.

So he could only say a few outlines: "This matter cannot be resolved overnight. It may not be possible to cure it completely in decades. Therefore, I, Da Ming, and the future cannot be forced to death, beating and beating. Just let them know where to go.

To solve the reliability of the musket, on the one hand, let the Academy of Sciences continue to add a waterproof structure to the ignition mechanism of the musket, and on the other hand, imagine a new excitation method.

However, the waterproof mechanism can only increase the probability of rain protection, and cannot solve the environment where the air is too humid. The final cure still has to be done from the perspective of chemical engineering.

Didn’t we produce nitrocellulose a few years ago and used it for rifled sniper bullets? Let the people in the Chemical Research Institute ponder whether the method of producing sulfuric acid and nitric acid can further reduce costs, increase efficiency, and increase production.

To equip more elite troops with smokeless gunpowder firearms, combined with smokeless gunpowder to completely innovate the excitation mechanism, it is estimated that the principle of flintlock must be completely changed to cure it. "

Zhu Shuren's instructions were naturally recorded by the people from the Academy of Sciences, and of course they had to follow the regent's instructions after returning home.

In the original history, the West actually invented the first-generation flash cap percussion gun in 1815, which replaced the principle of the flintlock, and it was the British who invented it first.

Early flash cap guns were similar to flintlock guns, and used percussion caps. Later, after the emergence of smokeless gunpowder, there were more efficient and reliable firing pin caps, which can be regarded as the needle-piercing mode of modern guns Completely in line.

It's just that the 1815 prototype flash cap gun in history has been tossed and run-in for several years. By the time it is mass-produced, the Napoleonic Wars have long since ended.

Relying on the Vienna system created by Prime Minister Metternich, the European continent has maintained overall peace for nearly a hundred years. There was no full-scale war in Europe until World War I, so the British did not bother to spend money to replace the flintlock guns during the Napoleonic Wars.

At the time of the first crow, the British were still using flintlock guns. After all, they were reluctant to part with the money, and felt that it was unnecessary to completely replace the caps.It wasn't until more than ten years later that the British and French allied forces helped the Ottomans attack the Crimea to fight the Rakshasa, and it was considered an emergency replacement of the cap gun before the war.

So from this point of view, Zhu Shuren ordered the military industry department to develop early-type waterproof flash cap technology to improve the reliability of firearms.

The "Made in Wuchang" produced by the Daye Arsenal when the Qing Dynasty was destroyed is roughly equivalent to the Western Charleville 1763, and the accumulated experience in this area is already very rich.

If we want to progress to the Manton 1815 model in the United Kingdom, there is only a 50-year generation gap in theory. In fact, in the West at that time, from the end of the Seven Years War in the 1760s to the French Civil War and the outbreak of American independence in the 1780s, countries around the world There is no sense of crisis, and military research and development has also been suspended for a while.

So in fact, in the war years, this is just a 30-year technological gap.Now with Zhu Shuren's guiding ideology and route guidance, if we want to bridge the 30-year technology gap, we can still work hard.

……

After roughly planning the technical shortcomings that can be made up in the fields of metallurgy, machinery, and processing.

Zhu Shuren thinks that the direct military level of technological advancement is basically enough.

The rest of the scientific and technological work in the next few years should focus on tapping the potential of those dual-use fields.After all, peaceful construction is still the main focus now, and the technology tree should not be too militaristic.

If certain technological goals can be achieved slowly with technology that is dual-use for both military and civilian purposes, there is no need to focus on purely relying on military technology to rush for success.

For example, when discussing the issue of "reliability of rifles in tropical humid environments" before, Zhu Shuren discovered that if the mass production cost and production scale of smokeless gunpowder can be reduced from the field of civilian chemical industry, it will be better than designing a large gun for the musket itself. It is much more cost-effective to pile up complex waterproof structures.

Because those complicated gun mechanical structure designs are useless if they are moved to the civilian field.After the gunpowder materials come up in the future, there will be no need for these historical detours and tinkering.

But if we really do a good job in chemical industry, the benefits can be eaten all the time, and the common people can also benefit.In the future, if the Ming Dynasty engages in the construction of water conservancy projects and large-scale construction projects, as long as the technology tree of gunpowder and explosives is kept backward, it will be beneficial and harmless.

Based on this common understanding, the follow-up agenda of the science and technology planning meeting will go more smoothly.Everyone naturally reached a consensus:
For the seven-year plan in the future, in the field of science and technology in the Ming Dynasty, the field that most needs to be strengthened by the imperial court's planning is the field of chemical engineering.

The formulation, preparation, production efficiency, and optimization of mass production of smokeless powder and other explosives are of course the first priority.

Other synthetically manufactured tropical disease control drugs, tropical anthelmintic drugs, and insecticides are also a sub-direction worthy of efforts.Because the inland tropical rain forests in Myanmar and Vietnam are really scary.

Although the Ming Dynasty had also launched a conquest of these remote areas before, there is no record of a stable station and maintenance of rule throughout the year so far.Even if the Ming army went to Vietnam, they could only gain a firm foothold in winter, and they still had to go in summer, otherwise they would be wiped out in batches.

Including 15 years ago, when Zhu Shuren asked Zheng Zhilong and Zheng Chenggong to recover Dayuan, it is said that Dayuan was cooler than Vietnam, but it was only on the boundary line between tropical and subtropical regions.But in the end, Zheng Zhilong still paid the price of Zheng Zhilong's death in Dayuan Island. Zheng Chenggong was all right because he was young and strong at the time.All military operations at that time were also carried out in winter, and the troops had to be withdrawn in summer.

It can be seen that the problem of stationing in the tropics in summer is a difficulty that Ming has never overcome.In the past seven years, we must focus on solving this point, through the advancement of medicinal chemistry, to completely realize the all-weather and all-season deterrence against tropical countries.

Let them know from then on: Da Ming can deal with them anytime he wants.

In addition to explosives, tropical disease drugs, and insecticides, Zhu Shuren himself has also appointed a direction for the next seven years in the field of chemistry, which is the development and utilization of rubber and the improvement of the properties of rubber products.

The reason for choosing rubber is also because Zhu Shuren knew that in the early days of industrial development in history, the importance of new materials such as rubber for waterproofing and airtightness.

The early steam engines had serious air leakage, and needed sealing rings for various cylinder nesting joints. With rubber, it may be possible to enter the industrial age ahead of schedule with lower industrial processing precision requirements in the future.

Zhu Shuren is very clear that many productions in the early chemical industry can be mass-produced as long as there are formulas, reaction methods and production methods through experiments. Even if there is no steam engine and the industrial age has not entered.Whether there is a steam engine, at most, only affects the power source of the reactor and the scale of reaction production.

There are so many indigenous chemical productions in later generations. India's Asan and Batie can even manufacture battery materials or recycle heavy metal compounds in small family workshops without any machines. It can be seen that the chemical industry's dependence on power sources is very low.

Therefore, even if Daming did not have a steam engine, Zhu Shuren was sure to click on the chemical technology tree first, and get out a bunch of chemical products from the 1830s or even the 1850s.As long as the "recipes" such as reaction equations and reaction environments can be summed up, other technological shortcomings will not be affected at all.

Historically, in the West, Goodyear produced nitrated rubber and vulcanized rubber successively in the 1830s, which solved the problems of high-temperature dissolution of rubber and rapid aging due to temperature changes.

In Zhu Shuren's view, since Daming's current local method of producing sulfuric acid and soil method of nitric acid has started, and this kind of soil method can be used to make nitrocellulose smokeless gunpowder, then expand the use of sulfuric acid and nitric acid to make the vulcanization and nitration of rubber also possible. After thorough research, it's just a layer of window paper pierced.

Historically, it took the British until the 1780s to improve the steam engine by Watt. When Watt was working on the steam engine, he did not process rubber to ensure the seal of the steam pipe.If Daming improves the technology of rubber sealing first, then maybe it only needs to reach the level of mechanical processing design in the West in 1750~1760 to create a Watt steam engine.

This can be regarded as a roundabout curve to make up for shortcomings.

Under such guiding ideology.In the next seven-year plan, almost all of Ming's national scientific research strength will be tilted towards the field of chemistry.As for other general civilian technologies, private investment and state encouragement are sufficient.

The spirit of the meeting that Zhu Shuren decided was soon distributed to the Daming Academy of Sciences, and also to the Ministry of Industry and Household Affairs.

When the Ministry of Industry raised resources, Fang Yizhi was absolutely unambiguous, and immediately allocated them to his little sister.The household department did not dare to delay in adding money to the budget.

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PS: I was busy dealing with other things in the morning. Today's chapter may be a bit of a running account, so please bear with me.Strive to make the following scenes more vivid.This book is up to 220 million words at most.If it is fast, it may be 210 million words, depending on the situation.

Everything that should be explained in the future will definitely be explained clearly.After all, it has been written to this point, and it must start well and end well, everyone can rest assured.